Organized by the Mills College Art Museum, this exhibition presents a unique examination of the artist’s artistic process and current research through previously unseen archival materials. New York-based artist Sarah Oppenheimer is internationally recognized for her architectural interventions that explore how space is animated and experienced. The exhibition presents a unique examination of Oppenheimer’s artistic process and her current research.

For each of Oppenheimer’s large-scale spatial interventions, there is an extensive archive of material created. This includes both hand and digital drawings; aluminum, glass, and wood prototypes; three-dimensional models; light studies; and customized computer code, among other materials.

For the exhibition at MCAM, Oppenheimer has designed a series of tables, each highlighting an area of her process, including: mapping spatial arrays, exploring the effects of multiple sightlines, predicting the movement of bodies through architectural space, disrupting surface continuity and direction, and testing the impact of lighting variables such as reflectivity and color.

Oppenheimer’s exhibit focuses on this extensive body of unseen work, highlighting a set of key projects that demonstrate the physical and conceptual specificity of her practice, particularly as it effects her current methods and ideas regarding materiality, light, perception, and spatial engagement. The exhibit includes materials from a cross-section of Oppenheimer’s projects but focuses primarily on research around two related projects: D-33, at PPOW, New York (2012), and 33-D, at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland (2014).

An exhibition catalogue featuring new scholarship by Julian Rose, architect and senior editor at Artforum, and Stephanie Weber, art historian and curator, accompanies the exhibition. The publication documents previously unseen works featured in the exhibition.

Sarah Oppenheimer received a B.A. from Brown University in 1995 and an M.F.A. in painting from Yale University in 1999. Oppenheimer’s first solo exhibition was held in 2002 at the Drawing Center, New York. Since that time, her work has been exhibited internationally. Recent projects include W-12302, an architecturally embedded permanent commission at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2012); 33-D, a double threshold at Kunsthaus Basel (2014) and a solo exhibition at MassMoCA. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Saint Louis Art Museum; and the Sculpture Center, Long Island City. Oppenheimer has been the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2007); the Louis Comfort
Tiffany Foundation (2010-11); the Rome Prize (2010–11) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowship (2011). She is a critic in painting/printmaking at Yale University.

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